by Pat Murphy
I leaned back in the water, squinting at the slope and holding the picture in my mind. I was still tired, a lingering weariness from all the sleepless nights in Los Angeles, and the pot had relaxed me. I listened to the beating of my own heart, steady as a drum. I relaxed, half asleep though I could still feel the ledge beneath me, the water around me. I listened to the crickets in the monte, and their trilling seemed to come and go, keeping time with the beating of my heart. The tone of the cricket’s song seemed to change as I listened, growing harsher, a sharp buzzing like beans in a rattle.
Suddenly I was afraid. I smelled smoke in the air, an acrid scent like burning pitch. My eyes were closed and I was afraid to open them, afraid of what I might see.
I shivered suddenly and opened my eyes. For an instant, I saw a temple at the end of the pool, as detailed as I had imagined it. On the steps, a blue-robed figure stood watching me. Then there was nothing but rocks, sunlight, and shadows. The temple was gone.
The sun was nearly down. A bat flew overhead, dipping and dodging in erratic flight. I shivered again, climbed out of the pool, and dressed. I returned to camp through the darkness where the trees shaded the path. I knew the path from each afternoon’s visit to the pool, but things seemed different now: the trees seemed closer to the path; the path seemed rougher; the noises of the monte seemed louder, and it bothered me that I did not know what animals were rustling in the bushes. Something moved at the edge of my field of vision, and I turned toward it. Nothing there. Maybe a bird flying overhead. Again, I caught a flickering movement in the corner of my eye. Again, nothing. Maybe the shadow of a swaying branch. I hurried along the path to Salvador’s hut, where the lantern light would chase back the shadows. I hurried from the trees by Salvador’s hut and almost tripped over Teresa.
The little girl crouched in the deep shadow by the garden wall, playing with a scrawny black kitten. The kitten came to greet me, mewing piteously, and I knelt to stroke it. Teresa stood by the garden wall, one hand at her mouth, the other clutching the hem of her dress. The air was hot and heavy. Already, I felt sweaty and dusty again. My mouth was dry.
‘What’s the cat’s name?’ I asked Teresa. At least, that’s what I intended to ask. I think I said something like that in Spanish.
She did not answer. She watched me with round brown eyes, as if I were dangerous yet fascinating.
‘Cat got your tongue?’ I asked in English.
Still she didn’t speak. The kitten was purring, a steady desperate throbbing under my hand. I smiled at Teresa, seeing in her expression a reflection of my panic down by the cenote. I think she wanted to run back into her yard, but she found me intriguing. ‘Qué tal?’ I asked her. ‘How’s it going?’
The creak of an opening door sent her scurrying away through the gate and into the foliage of the yard. An old woman was stepping through the doorway of Salvador’s house; Maria was just behind her. Maria was speaking quickly in Maya, and her hands were clasped together in supplication. Salvador followed the two women, saying nothing. I remained where I was, petting the kitten and listening to it purr.
The gate was right beside me. The old woman stopped in the middle of the path and said something sharp in Maya. I looked up at her and smiled, but she did not smile back. She said something to me in Spanish and scowled when I did not reply. Maria murmured something, and the old woman shook her head. She thumped her walking cane on the ground angrily and repeated herself.
‘I don’t understand,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry. No comprendo.’
Maria quickly made the sign of the cross, still staring at me. The old woman leaned forward. She took hold of my arm and peered into my face as if she wanted to remember it later. Her breath smelled of chili peppers. I drew back, startled, but her hand stopped me. I tried to smile. ‘What do you want?’ I asked in English.
She shook her head, released my arm, and started down the path to the plaza. Salvador glanced at me and followed the old woman. Maria retreated into the house. I stood and watched Salvador and the old woman walk away. The kitten rubbed against my legs, gazing up at me expectantly. I found that I was holding my arm where the old woman had touched me as if I were stanching the blood flow from a wound. I let my breath out in a rush.
For a moment, I stood where I was, unwilling to follow the old woman and Salvador along the path to the plaza. The hair on my neck prickled, and I glanced toward Salvador’s hut. Maria stood in the doorway, her arms crossed, watching me. I turned away, stumbling a little, following another path, one I had noticed but never followed, away from Salvador’s hut.
I felt strange and unsettled. Nothing had happened – I reminded myself of that. Drug-induced paranoia, that’s all. A dream, an old Mayan woman – nothing really. But the shadows around me seemed darker and my hand kept touching my arm where the old woman had held me. I wished that I had understood what she had said.
The path led through the monte to a dirt road that ran along the edge of the henequen field. To my left, the henequen field stretched away, mile after mile of spiky brutal plants. The sun had set and the moon was rising. In the moonlight, the henequen plants cast distorted shadows. Each plant made a tangle of darkness beside it, a black net of shadows that could trap anyone foolish enough to stroll among them. The dirt road was clear of plants and I walked in the center between the wheel ruts.
On my right grew the monte. Near the road, the scrubby mass of brush was no taller than I. Beyond that, maybe fifty feet from the road, larger trees reached for the sky with dry branches. The wind made the leaves rustle, but it was not strong enough to stir the branches.
When I was in junior high school, my father sent me to summer camp for a month. I remember walking through the woods at night from the campfire to my tent. I was always very careful to stay on the path. The path was safe; it was marked ground. The woods beyond the path were unknown, filled with strange sounds. But at the same time, the woods fascinated me. I found excuses to walk along the path at night, and each time that I passed through the woods unharmed I felt that I had accomplished something noteworthy.
I was never sure what the danger was. Nothing concrete: I did not fear mad killers or wild animals. I never thought it out completely, but I think I felt that if I stepped off the path I might vanish, blend with the darkness and be gone. The darkness drew me and repelled me, and I walked the thin line, never straying from the path.
My footsteps seemed loud. I could hear an owl hooting in the trees. I walked with my hands in my pockets, knowing that I was walking along a thin line once again.
The old woman stepped from the shadow of the monte. For a moment, I thought it was the same old woman who had touched my arm. No, not the same. She was dressed in blue and she grinned at me, displaying crooked teeth. Her head seemed misshapen, though perhaps it was just the way her hair was arranged. I recognized her face: the face I had seen on the stone head, the face of the Madonna in the Mérida cathedral. I backed away.
Her grin grew wider and she held out her hand as if to welcome me. I took another step away from her, back toward camp.
She said something in a language that I did not understand, and she laughed. The sound was like dry leaves rustling against one another. My hands, still in my pockets, were trembling. I took them from my pockets and made fists to stop them from shaking. Then I turned and hurried back toward camp, pursued by the sound of her laughter.
What was it that my mother had said in one of our morning walks? At twilight and dawn, the shadows show you secrets. I don’t know why I ran. She was probably just a woman from the hacienda or maybe a companion to Maria’s visitor. She would probably tell Maria that she had met this gringa wandering in the bush and scared her to death. I must have imagined that her face was familiar. The dim light played tricks.
I had reached Salvador’s hut when I saw a flashlight beam bobbing down the path to the cenote. ‘Hello,’ I called out, my voice a little shaky.
‘Hey,’ Barbara called back. ‘I wondered what happened to you.�
� She came up beside me and shone her light on me. She laid a hand on my shoulder and said, ‘What’s up? You don’t look good.’
‘Nothing. Just went for a walk and got caught in the dark, that’s all.’ I shrugged. ‘It gets creepy alone at night. That’s all.’ I didn’t mention the old woman. I didn’t want to feel any more foolish. ‘Let’s go back to camp.’
15
Elizabeth
The Fates guide those who will; those who won’t they drag.
– Joseph Campbell,
The Hero with a Thousand Faces
Thursday night, after another burned dinner, I sat in my hut, checking my notes on the Mayan calendar. I had caught a chill on the way back from our attempt to raise the stela. Though the evening was warm, occasionally I would be taken by a violent spell of shivering and chills. I considered asking Maria to prepare me a pot of hot tea. Boiling-hot tea laced with rum might head off a cold, but in the end I decided against asking anything of Maria. I had heard Salvador’s truck roaring back to camp, returning from the village of Chicxulub with the curandera, and I did not want to blunder into a touchy situation.
I checked my calculations, and rechecked them. Today was Men, a day governed by the old goddess of the moon. It should have been a favorable day, yet the stela had fallen, an outcome I would not consider favorable. I had not seen Zuhuy-kak since that afternoon.
The camp was quiet; the students were either writing up field notes or swimming in the cenote. Camp had been quiet ever since Philippe’s accident. The sun had set and the moon was just rising when I saw Salvador walking toward my hut. The old woman who walked beside him took two small steps for every one of his. Tucked under one arm, she carried an orange-and-red plastic shopping bag, the kind that Yucatecan housewives use to carry groceries. She walked slowly, leaning on a cane.
Salvador stopped in the doorway to my hut and removed his broad-brimmed straw hat. ‘Señora,’ he said in Spanish. ‘I am sorry to interrupt you. This is Doña Lucinda Calderón, the curandera from Chicxulub. She wanted to meet you.’
Doña Lucinda was examining my hut and myself with great interest. She was a thin old woman with eyes like a predatory bird. Her huipil was elaborately embroidered around the neck and hem with a pattern of twisting green vines and flowers. A rebozo was draped casually over her gray hair and her shoulders; leather sandals were strapped to her feet. Her cane was rosewood; the face of an owl watched me from its carven head,
‘Welcome, Doña Lucinda,’ I said in Maya, rising from my chair. I took my other folding chair from the corner and put it in the open doorway. The old woman placed her bag on the ground by the chair and sat down, leaning forward on her cane – the tip set on the ground, the owl’s head locked between her hands.
‘Thank you,’ she said in Maya. Her voice was strong. ‘Performing the cleansing ritual leaves me weary. I have grown old.’
I nodded in sympathy. ‘How can I help you?’
For a moment, she continued her scrutiny of my hut. Her nostrils flared, as if she were trying to place an elusive scent. She studied my hands, my face, the papers on my desk top. The sleeves of my shirt were rolled to the elbow.
She lifted her cane from the ground and pointed the tip to the scars on my wrists. ‘How did you come by this?’
I glanced at the scars and made a cutting gesture with one hand on the wrist of the other. ‘By my own hand,’ I said. ‘Many years ago.’
‘Ah.’ She glanced again at the papers on my desk. ‘And what is it you are doing now?’
‘Writing,’ I said. ‘A book about this place.’
Salvador, standing in the doorway, was holding the brim of his hat in both hands and turning the hat around and around restlessly. I offered cigarettes. Salvador accepted; the old woman declined. I lit one for myself and for a moment we filled the silence with smoke.
‘How is Philippe?’ I asked at last.
‘The doctors at Hospital Juarez have set his broken bones,’ she said. ‘They will heal.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I understand that.’
‘I respect the doctors at the hospital,’ she said. Her eyes were dark and shrewd. ‘You must understand that. My grandson, a clever young man, is studying to be a doctor. The hospital is very good for treating natural illness.’ She was leaning forward as she tried to impress me with her progressive attitude toward medicine. ‘But you must understand that Philippe has more than broken bones. As you know, he has bad luck.’
‘That is true,’ I said. ‘Salvador said that we are digging in a place of bad luck.’
She glanced at Salvador then frowned at me. ‘The place that you are digging does not matter so much. But the gods are strong now. And Philippe was digging on the day Ix, a day of ill fortune.’
I glanced at Salvador, but he was looking at the burning tip of his cigarette. He did not meet my eyes. Strange, to have my calculations confirmed so directly. ‘The bad luck is past then,’ I said. ‘That is good to hear.’
She rolled the rosewood cane between her hands and the eyes of the carved wooden owl stared in a new direction. Doña Lucinda scowled and continued staring at my face. ‘Do not be a fool,’ she said crossly. ‘You know better. Tell me, what day is today?’
‘On the Mayan calendar?’ I shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’
She narrowed her eyes as if she expected better of me. ‘Today is the day Men,’ she said. She jerked her head toward the rising moon, but did not look away from my face. ‘She is a fickle old woman, Men. Contrary. Always turning a new face. She is not to be trusted.’
I was uncomfortable under her gaze. I shrugged.
‘Today is the eighth day in Cumku, the last month of the year,’ she said. ‘This is not a safe time. The gods are strong now.’ Her voice had dropped. I could barely make out her words. ‘You must be careful.’ Salvador was not watching us; he was smoking his cigarette and looking away, gazing out into the open plaza. ‘The year is almost over.’
I shook my head, took a drag on my cigarette, and stubbed it out in the ashtray. My hands were shaking and I folded them in my lap.
‘Why do you look at me as if you do not understand? You know these things,’ she said. ‘I can see that you have the second soul.’ The second soul is what gives power to a witch – a bruja in Spanish, a wai in Maya. The second soul is a source of power.
What did I say before? The mad recognize their own. Her head was cocked to one side, and she was watching me carefully. ‘You are a strong woman, and that is a danger to you. You seek to stand alone in the evil times, and that cannot be. Unlucky days are coming.’
She stopped and waited for me to speak. ‘How can I be careful?’ I asked. ‘I cannot change the time of year.’
‘Leave this place,’ she said.
‘Impossible,’ I said.
‘It is not safe here. Not for you, not for the rest.’
I shrugged.
She frowned and thumped her cane on the ground. ‘I want to help you, Señora Butler, you must understand that. You are a clever woman. Now you must listen. This is a serious business.’ Her hands gripped her cane more tightly. ‘Send away the young one, the redheaded woman, your daughter.’
I was shaking my head slowly. ‘My daughter has nothing to do with this,’ I said in English.
The old woman shrugged. She did not understand the words, but she seemed to understand my tone. ‘It is your choice. You may choose to be a fool. You speak our language well, but you do not understand this place. You do not belong here.’
My hands were in fists. Who was this old woman to tell me that I did not belong? I belonged. I spoke with the dead; I knew the day of the year. My hands were trembling and I shivered with a sudden chill. ‘That may be so,’ I said to her. ‘But I cannot leave now.’
‘I tell you to leave this place,’ she said. ‘If you choose not to . . .’ She shrugged. ‘I will pray for you and your daughter.’
I wondered what gods she would pray to. ‘Thank you for telling me this, Doña Lucinda. I will
think about it.’ I stood up.
The old woman remained seated, staring up at me with beady black eyes. ‘Listen to me, señora.’
‘Thank you for your advice, Doña Lucinda.’
She stood reluctantly with the aid of her cane, bent slowly to pick up her shopping bag, and turned away. In the doorway, she stopped and turned back to make the sign of the cross and mutter a blessing.
Salvador put on his hat. ‘I am sorry, señora,’ he said, but whether he was sorry for bringing the old woman to me or sorry that I was a witch, I did not know. He turned away to follow the old woman across the plaza. Whatever he was sorry about, I knew he was embarrassed.
I could see a lantern burning in Tony’s hut, but I did not want to speak with him, not now, not yet. I walked alone to the tomb site. Zuhuy-kak was there, sitting on a stone beside the picks, sifting trays, and buckets. The moon was rising and she cast a shadow in the dim light.
As I approached, she looked up and nodded in greeting. ‘What do you want from me, Ix Zacbeliz?’ she asked.
‘Answers,’ I said. ‘Why did the stela fall when we tried to raise it? This day was governed by the goddess. We should have had good fortune.’
She squinted at me, her eyes as shrewd as the eyes of the curandera. I realized that she was more solid than any other shadow had ever become. Even in the moonlight, I could see the fine lines etched on her jade beads, the stitches in the embroidery on her robe. She spread her hands on her lap. ‘That was good fortune, Ix Zacbeliz. When the stela fell, the warrior lost his place. His strength is gone and the strength of the goddess is returning. Today was governed by the goddess and you helped her gain strength.’
‘Not good fortune,’ I said irritably. My joints ached and I knew that the chill that I had caught was creeping into my bones. ‘We wanted that stela intact, not in two pieces.’